My “Because Washington is Hollywood For Ugly People” is gonna be in this show! You will see it on 4th Floor in a 42″ plasma. Here are the text from the New Museum:
“The final portion of “Unmonumentalâ€? will be presented online. “Montage: Unmonumental Onlineâ€? will feature works by an international group of fourteen emerging and midcareer artists who appropriate diverse material from the Web to create new Internet-based montage. Cutting and pasting, breaking apart and re-assembling, ripping and remixing, the participating artists extend the radical practice of collage to the Internet, demonstrating how previously tried techniques can engender rich, new artistic practices. Their works incorporate varied formal elements: digital images, sound, video, or code, and also recite fictions and fantasies found online.”
The Internet is a veritable theme park for commerce, popular entertainment, and self-marketing. Rather than dismiss this creative space for these reasons, the artists embrace these unique conditions. The logic behind the selection of the work argues that an artist’s engagement with this system and simultaneous refusal to entrench commerce is among the most powerful tactics available to them. The exhibition will be available online from February 15 to April 6, 2008 at rhizome.org/montage. Participating artists are:
Michael Bell-Smith
John Michael Boling
William Boling
Charles Broskoski
Jessica Ciocci
Petra Cortright
Chris Coy
Cao Fei
Kenneth Hung
Nina Katchadourian
Oliver Laric
Olia Lialina
Guthrie Lonergan
Paul Slocum
ARTKRUSH review by PAUL LASTER
“A master of cut-and-paste, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung creates savvy, supersaturated media works; his past projects include illustrations for WIRED magazine and the album cover of Felix da Housecat‘s Devin Dazzle & the Neon Fever. Hung’s 2007 video Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People takes a satirical look at American politics and pop culture, beginning with a “2008 Residential Erection Dance Off,” in which the recent round of presidential candidates — including a cheerleading John McCain and a three-headed Hillary Clinton robot — strut their stuff in the Oval Office. Because Washington then rollercoasters through the past decade, mixing celebrity with conflict as the Statue of Liberty flips the bird to the huddled masses, Osama bin Laden is martyred on a cross, and Karl Rove craps out a blundering Condoleezza Rice. It’s a dizzying but riveting ride, filled with Hung’s outrageous imagery, MC Paul Barman‘s sarcastic narration, and John Blue‘s scene-setting music.”
